


Resuscitate

by SaltCore



Series: Tumblr Rewrites [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bamf mercy, Hurt McCree, M/M, background justice siblings, mercy & mccree are bros, meta about rezzing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 00:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19983184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: No one is dead until Angela says they are.





	Resuscitate

Brain death occurs six minutes after the cessation of the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain, give or take. Once that grim cascade of cellular failure in the central nervous system begins, there is little that can be done to return someone to the same state of fitness they had before. The fine gestalt of neurons and chemistry and electricity that makes up a _person_ is so very delicate and difficult to retrieve once lost.

(Angela Ziegler has had to ask herself this question over and over in her life—how far gone is too far? When is it a greater cruelty to force a body back into motion? When is the person lost, and a new one constituted from the broken tissue? She should have studied philosophy too, but there was never time.)

A single wordless wail over the comms starts the timer.

McCree was down, she knew that, and she was already moving. Reinhardt is providing her cover, Genji watching their flanks. Captain Amari and Fareeha are clearing the way from on high. Adrenaline is pouring into her bloodstream, fueling her frantic sprint toward the waypoint Hanzo had thrown up. She rounds the final corner, but the gravel under her boots slides, throwing her balance, so she leaps and uses her suit to cover the last few meters.

Angela is used to aftermath of violence, has been steeped in it since before she dedicated her life to undoing harm, so the scene she finds doesn’t faze her. She long ago learned how to compartmentalize away the horror of seeing an old friend ashen and bloody so that she can work.

McCree is lying in the dirt, in a puddle of dark blood. (McCree, who was about her age but already worn to cynicism when they met in youth. McCree, who held doors open for her and paid her silly compliments anyway. McCree, reliable and gregarious and too clever by half, is lying there, another light flickering and sputtering and about to go out.) Hanzo is pressing McCree’s serape to a wound in his thigh—damage to the femoral artery is likely, if he only now lost consciousness that’s a miracle—and screaming, demanding that McCree look at him, that he say something. He is vacillating in place, scared to move his hands, desperate to try to wake McCree. Angela kneels down by McCree’s head, digs her fingers into the skin under his jaw.

There’s nothing.

She doesn’t double check, it would only be a waste of time, she just starts punching settings into the Caduceus. The nanites at their most aggressive might be enough, but they’ll have to ravage McCree to get enough raw materials to replace his blood and tissues quickly enough to save him. No matter, she can deal with that later. It is, comparatively, a wonderful problem to have.

Beside her, Hanzo reaches a trembling hand up and presses his fingers into McCree’s wrist, leaving red smears on his skin and glove. He finds the same thing she did, and that drives him to abandon the wound to lean over McCree. Hanzo shakes his partner with a desperate intensity, like it might do any good.

“Jesse,” he says with the voice of a man about to shatter. “Jesse, _please_.”

His voice cracks on the last word, but McCree can’t hear him. No matter how much Hanzo shakes, McCree will remain utterly limp, utterly insensate. He is no longer just knocking at Death’s door but teetering on the threshold. Tears cut tracks in the dust on Hanzo’s face, flowing sluggishly over his cheeks. His breathing begins to pick up, barreling toward hyperventilation, toward true panic.

"No, no, _no, nonono_."

Hanzo tries to gather McCree up, to cradle him close. He's in the way, thoughtless in his pain. Genji, realizing this, hauls his brother off of McCree. Hanzo flails and struggles, screams and howls, the first pangs of grief robbing him utterly of his composure. He smears blood on them both before Genji throws him to the ground two or so meters away.

“You have to let her work!” Genji shouts. His voice gets clipped a little by the amplifiers in his mask, the synthetic notes briefly making him sound almost like an omnic. Hanzo shouts back something in Japanese, and this is when Angela stops paying attention to them, but if she had, she would have seen Hanzo try to get to his feet and Genji pin him to ground. She can still hear them yell, but it isn’t intelligible to her and therefore easy to tune out.

(She does hear the raw agony in Hanzo’s voice, the carefully controlled fear in Genji’s. She is distantly worried about violence between them. She is distantly worried about so much, so often.)

She starts the stream, and her headset immediately begins dictating the progress into her ear. She listens to the torrent of data, makes adjustments accordingly. Once the artery is closed again, she directs the full force of the nanites to assist in replacing the lost blood and keeping McCree’s brain tissue oxygenated. They are still within the window. There’s still time.

If at this moment Angela was to turn, she would see Fareeha touch down just in front of Reinhardt. She does hear her call out her brother’s name, but Reinhardt’s broad hand on her shoulder anchors her to the ground like gravity never could. Captain Amari walks up behind them and surveys the scene, then begins distributing orders like Angela distributes nanites.

“Both of you, get up!” she barks. “Go back to the transport. Genji, call ahead to Oxton as you do. Fareeha, go up, keep the path clear. Reinhardt, you’ll cover us as we go back.”

She says all that without a trace of panic in her voice, just the calm assurance that her orders will be followed once given. _I am in charge_ , her tone says, _you can leave the deciding to me_. She commands the respect of everyone here, and wields it judiciously in moments such as these. It is a sort of kindness, giving everyone something to focus on that’s not their fear and absolving them of any responsibility beyond doing what they’re told.

Angela, though, only barely hears her.

Captain Amari kneels down across from Angela. Her gaze wanders across McCree, assessing much like Angela had a moment ago. She doesn’t speak, knows better than to distract a specialist working, but she does dig a small square of material out of her pack and begins unfolding it into a stretcher beside McCree, confident in Angela.

McCree’s vascular volume is rising. His heart should now have something to latch on to, something to move, and her equipment says his cardiac electrical activity is intact. She reaches down on instinct and squeezes his hand, counting under her breath— _eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf_ —until she will have to do something more drastic.

Her equipment picks up his pulse at the moment he gasps, a ragged awful noise because McCree’s lungs are blackened, tortured things. The gasp is followed by an exhale, inhale, exhale, and so on. Angela pulls out a pen light, lifts McCree’s eyelid, and swipes the light across his eye. His pupil contracts, just like it should. She wasn’t too late, most probably.

“Let’s get him back,” Angela says. Captain Amari nods and Reinhardt steps over. He does most of the lifting to get McCree on the stretcher, and then he takes the handle at the head. Captain Amari and Angela grab the handles near McCree’s feet, and together they march out, setting a quick pace. Angela listens to her equipment as they go, the nanites still working. McCree keeps breathing, his heart keeps beating.

They thunder up the ramp into the Orca, Reinhardt heading directly to the medical station. Someone has already pulled the bed out of the wall, so they set McCree and the stretcher directly onto it. Angela pulls out IV bags—synthetic blood, a nutrient mix—while Captain Amari straps him down for transport. Her hands start the IV almost on their own, the motions so familiar as to be automatic. It’s only once she’s done that she turns around to look at the rest of the Orca’s personnel bay. Everyone is staring at her with the same question written on their faces.

She nods.

They all seem to exhale at once, like they were all holding the same breath. Angela has seen this too many times too, so she turns back and pulls a small jump seat out from the wall so she can sit by McCree for the flight. Captain Amari calls up to Lena to take off, then directs everyone else to strap in. Once they’re in the air, Angela will check everyone else over, but for the moment she just sits, rides out the comedown. She glances up and sees Hanzo staring at them, such open relief on his face it looks like he cannot stand it. Sees Captain Amari’s quiet gratitude, sees Fareeha’s happiness. 

She looks down at McCree. This is the part she works for, watching the color come back to someone’s face, listening to lungs that would have stopped forever without her help, seeing the proof that she made a difference.

McCree's eyes flutter open, roaming dazedly until they catch hers. One corner of his mouth lifts into one of his crooked smiles. 

"Saved my hide again, huh." 

"I think you're getting used to it, cowboy."

He laughs at that, and that's the moment when she's sure all is well.


End file.
